Beet crop harvesting machines are known in the state of the art.
These harvesting machines comprise generally a foliage cutting device for cutting the foliage off the root, an uprooting device for extracting the root crop out of the soil and a cleaning transport path for conveying the extracted root crop to a storage bunker and from there to a root crop heap.
A further root crop harvesting machine is known from http://www.ropa-maschinenbau.de/news/entsteinung-f%C3%BCr-biogasr%C3%BCben. This harvesting machine has a root crop bunker and a water bath for separating stones from root crop and for washing the root crop.
The root crop, in particular sugar beet, is generally stored at the side of the field on root crop heaps before being loaded onto trucks for further processing.
However, the cutting operation for cutting off the foliage and conveying the roots on the harvesting machine causes the root to have “wounds”, i.e. locations at which the skin of the root is damaged or cut away. The root crop is prone to deterioration at these locations, for example rotting. In order to limit the likelihood of rotting, in the state of the art the root crop heap is covered with a foil or rot inhibitors are applied to the crop heap.
These solutions are not satisfactory and lead to an important loss of root crop due to rot or an important cost due to large amount of rot inhibitors to be used.
Furthermore, cleaning the root crop in the path from the uprooting to the root crop reservoir is not satisfactory.